Mistakes
by Gandalf3213
Summary: Sherlock had never had a real friend before, so he was bound to screw up his relationship with John a couple of times. He just had to hope that, in the end, they would come out for the better, and John wouldn't be dead.
1. Pain

_"Listen, what I said before, John. I meant it. I don't have friends. I've just got one." **Sherlock , Hounds of Baskerville**_

.***.

Sherlock didn't _get_ friends.

What was the point, when in the end the only thing that really mattered is that you lived and you died and somewhere in between, maybe, you solved a few crimes and made a bit of difference. But everyone was going to end up as ashes and dust and wormfood in the end. And with friends came obligations. Emotions. Caring. Why invest so much time in such a worthless phenominon?

John was the exception. In everything the man did, he was the exception.

He was exceptionally average, except when he wasn't. He was shorter than average. Marginally more intelligent than average. A better than average doctor. And he cared, probably more than average. Probably to make up for Sherlock's lack of caring. People die. That's what they do.

In the end, you see, no matter how noble his pursuits turned out to be, he was much, much more like Jim Moriarity than John Watson.

Because Sherlock didn't _get_ friends. Not when he was at school, not when he was an adult. He didn't know how to be a friend. Which is probably why he screwed up the whole friendship thing many, many times before getting it right.

**One: Pain**

It took twenty-four hours and quite a bit of commotion before Sherlock realized John Watson was in excrutiating pain. Which is strange, for a man as hyper observant as he was. John was an open book. Usually.

The day started off normally enough. Sherlock hadn't slept the night before - he rarely kept normal hours, and sleeping for more than three or four hours at a go always made him feel worthless. Dead. There was so many other things he could be doing with his time, and just getting his brain to switch off long enough to catch a quick nap was an extraordinary achievement in and of itself.

He heard John moving around but ignored the sound in favor of staring at their not-so-busy stretch of London, trying to determine if the delivery boy had gotten his girlfriend pregnant or was merely jumpy.

"Tea." He said, the precise moment John walked in. He didn't turn around, and John hadn't made that much noise, but it was one of those things that the doctor had learned to just let lie. Sherlock could explain his methods time and time again and John would never cease to be amazed at them.

"Love some." Hint one, if Sherlock hadn't been too focused on other things to pick it up: the tightness in John's voice. Tiredness.

"Haven't made any yet, but the kettle should be right there."

A sigh, a shifting of movement, the scrape of metal against metal as the lid of the kettle was lifted off. "Particular reason why thumbs are boiling on the stove?"

"Perhaps nanny would be good enough to make us some tea." Another sigh, and Sherlock rolled his eyes. Sometimes John really was insufferable in the mornings. "Nightmares again?"

"I'm not discussing them with you, Sherlock." Which was a yes, of course it was. Sherlock had been able to hear the bed creak, hear the faint moans through the wall. Something about the change of weather had brought with it old war memories. It was the fourth night this week his flatmate had been disturbed by such demons.

"As you no longer have a therepist..."

"Like you could stand in for a therepist." John snorted, lips twitching. This was right. Sherlock was used to amusing John, though he rarely understood the joke himself. "You don't have the empathy to fill a thimble."

"And I suppose you do?"

"I've actually been graded on empathy. Top of my class in bedside manner." John said this quietly, a little embarassed. He never liked putting his achievements out there, stacking them next to the great Sherlock Holmes's.

"I thought you were getting us tea?"

John moved for the doorhandle, winced, but this detail was insignificant compared with the ruckus that was starting outside. Sherlock let it pass. He really was trying to work on his empathy, at least as far as John went, and if the doctor didn't want to be reminded of wartime terrors than he wouldn't bring them up.

And so that opportunity passed.

When the client came by later in the day, Sherlock jumped at the opportunity to investigate a case at the docks. The trade industry had never struck him as particularly interesting, but the inside world of ships, manifestos, and the sea was. Remember, when Sherlock was younger he'd wanted to be a pirate.

Sherlock was up in a flash, eyes bright at the opportunity to get out of their ridiculously boring flat and do something fun for a change. "Come on, John, there isn't a moment to waste."

That wince again, and when Sherlock examined his memories it was there, perfectly clear and obvious, but somehting about the adrenaline of the game, the opportunity of a new case, had driven all other matters from his mind. "Perhaps I should sit this one out, Sherlock?"

"Nonsense. No one else can write up these exploits quite as fantastically as you." Ah, you see, if Sherlock had been more used to friendships and caring and all that, he would have noticed John sigh and look away when he made that point. Because he was belittling him again. Using him only as a sort of ego-boost. But Sherlock didn't mean that at all. Sometimes people who felt things felt them too strongly, and took words the wrong way, when all Sherlock really meant to say was that he thought that John's writing was halfway decent and anyway, the Yard would probably be there and while Lestrade didn't mind Sherlock, no body minded John, and sometimes being mild-mannered and average was the way to open doors.

In the end, of course, John went with him. How could he not? He excused himself to his bedroom and put on his coat in the privacy of a place where no one would see him wince with the pain that erupted in his arm in the bad weather. John Watson didn't have a limp, of course, he wasn't shot in the leg. But he was shot in the joint of the shoulder, and occassionally that could be just as painful.

The docks were windy, desloate, and it was only once they'd gotten there that John remembered he hadn't eaten anything all day. And the stake-out would last all night, with no chance that Sherlock himself would get hungry. When Sherlock died (he would, eventually, the thrill of the game would kill him, one day) John would make sure his body went to science.

"What is it then?" Sherlock asked as the meandered up and down the docks, occassionally stopping and staring, and generally trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.

"What do you mean?" John asked, sighing. Sometimes explaining normal human emotions to the sociopath got tedious.

"I mean you are continually moving your upper body. It can't be because you're nervous we're beign watched - this will turn violent in a few minutes, and you've always been thrilled by violence."

"Don't say that, Sherlock. You make it sound like I love seeing people end up in bloody messes."

"Don't you?"

"No. Because then I have to go to my real job and put them back together."

"Oh." A beat of silence, with only the gentle sloshing of the Thames and the companionable back-and-forth calls of the workers to break it. Sherlock opened his mouth, and John knew that the next words would somehow end up annoying him. If Sherlock didn't know or guess that the suddenly damp, cold air was making his whole left arm _ache_ then why should he bring it up?

Fortunately, that was the moment the violence started, and the subject was dropped.

They waited for the police to arrive, Sherlock leaning easily against a post and John stooped over slightly, persumably examining one of them men they'd just knocked out. "You're sure these are the ones who've been...?"

"Positive, John. You can tell by their fingernails." Which obviously made sense in Sherlock's world, and John just let it pass. "What are you doing, anyway?"

"Making sure you didn't kill them."

"I know how to knock someone out without killing them, John."

"Still." John stood up, winced again, and it was this one that Sherlock caught and remembered.

"What was that?"

"What?"

"You winced."

"Sherlock..." John rolled his eyes, annoyed. He stood straight up, and then it was obvious. Obvious that his whole arm shook, and he had to grab it with his right arm, grimacing with the pain of it.

Sherlock stared for a second, then sprang forward, lithe and nimble as a cat. He tore John's hand away, ignoring the other man's protestations, and ripped up the sleeve. "Sherlock! What are you doing?"

"Were you shot?" Logical conclusion #1: John's arm was shaking, he was in pain, and they'd just been in a violent exchange where a gun went off twice. Normal people would kick up a fuss if they'd been shot, but John wasn't normal, obviously. He put up with Sherlock's beastly antics, and that made him not normal.

"No, damnit, I wasn't shot. Sherlock. Sherlock!" But it was no use. The only consulting detective in the world had already ripped off his jacket, ripped open his shirt, and exposed him to the frigid December air.

The Yard was here, of course they would come as Sherlock was ripping off his clothes. Hadn't he said something about being glad there were no witnesses back at the pool? But he wouldn't be so lucky a second time. It wasn't even the witnesses to the undressing he was embarassed about. It was the fact that they saw...

"You weren't shot." Sherlock said, tilting his head in that way that always reminded John of the dog he used to have as a child. "But you're in pain. Because your shoulder looks like that."

Yes. _That._ Bunched up and angry around the place where he'd been shot back in the bloody desert. And now Donovan was staring at it, and Anderson, and they weren't attending to the newly-caught convicts but gaping at a war wound. "That's bloody awful, doc." Anderson said, smirking, and John felt his face go red. He knew he was ugly. There was a reason why not everyone could go out in public wearing just a sheet.

"Shut up, Anderson," Lestrade said, then turned his attention to Sherlock. "There a particular reason you had to ruin his shirt?"

"I thought he was shot."

"Well, now he's not shot and cold." Lestrade picked up John's coat and the ex-army doctor accepted it with a tight nod, unable to meet the other man's eyes. "You know," Lestrade said carefully, "That there is nothing to be ashamed of. It shows you're...you know. Brave. Made of stronger stuff than the rest of us who never saw combat."

Sherlock snorted at that. Of all the things that happened that day, that snort was the worst. John's face got hotter, redder, as he put on his jacket, and now the pain was such a steady throb it was easy enough to ignore. He knew that Sherlock disapproved of the military, and war, and all those tedious things common humans took part in, but he'd hoped...he'd thought that his flatmate would respect him enough to...

Lestrade cuffed Sherlock ont he head (and nobody ever cuffed Sherlock. Not Mycroft. Not anyone.) "Think about someone other than yourself for two minutes and get the doctor someplace warm. With a hot water bag. And the good painkillers."

And finally Sherlock managed to look almost contrite. He looked down at John, shivering on the dock after having helped bring down two huge men, one with a gun pointed at him, and his whole expression softened. This was why he didn't want emotions. He didn't want to feel that rush of compassion and concern when he looked at the shivering, hurt doctor. Didn't want to feel the guilt knowing that his neglect had added to it.

"Come on, John." This wasn't an apology for the abysmal day, or for dismissing John's service to his country with such derision, but the hand grabbing his arm so, so gently almost counted for an _I'm sorry_. The tea that was brought, laced with something a little bit stronger, was a sort of apology.

Sherlock had never had a friend before. He hadn't understood them. He hadn't wanted them. But now that he had one, he desperately wanted to cling to him. He just had to stop making all these blunders along the way.

**.***.**

**There will be...oh, four or five of these laced together with a grand finale. Sherlock blundering his way through friendship. John blundering his way through the enigma that is Sherlock. Reviews would be fabulous.**


	2. The Bloody Garridebs

_"We've got ourselves a serial killer. Love those—there's always something to look forward to. ." **Sherlock , Study In Pink**_

.***.

Sherlock didn't know how to talk to people.

He ended up saying the wrong thing. Always. This was something preordained. Something inevitable. And sometimes it was because he was trying to be the kind of human John was - he'd once asked a woman when her baby was due. The woman was not pregnant. He'd essentially called her fat, which she was, but apparently you weren't supposed to point that kind of thing out.

He also said the wrong things when talking to John - that time with Baskerville had been a perfect example - but then John would take pity on him and point out the error of his ways, if Sherlock hadn't gotten there yet, and everything would once again be right in the world.

But social situations had always been more difficult for him than the rest of the world. People were boring. Their lives and stories - which was all just variations on the same old sordid tale - were boring. Their interactions were boring. So he deleted whatever information he'd ever managed to aquire about how to behave around other people and went on with his life. Which worked, for the most part.

There was only one time that he could remember where he'd wished he'd said things differently. Because if he hadn't said _those_ words in _that_ order, maybe John wouldn't have been shot.

**Two: The Bloody Garridebs**

The case had seemed almost too simple: a rather small and unfortunate looking American suddenly appearing on Holmes's doorstep with an e-mail in hand informing him that a huge estate would be placed in his name if he could get one more person with his last name. "It's an unusual one," The man had said, twisting his hands together and staring out the window. "Garrideb. You don't get Garridebs too often."

"But there must be some of you," John had said consolingly, "Cousins? Brothers? Just Google the name. I'm sure it'll turn up."

"I'm the last one in my family," The American said, still looking out the window, "My father had a brother, but he died. Everyone else is..." He didn't continue, just shrugged and continued looking out the window at the existence below them. "And I tried Google. The only thing that comes up is me, this Alexander Hamilton fellow -"

Sherlock's brain made the associations at once: Alexander Hamilton, American, Founding Father, first Secretary of Treasury, killed in a gun duel by Vice President Aaron Burr. He would have deleted these facts long ago, but had a soft spot for Alexander Hamilton, who had done some early classifications on thickness of coins.

This all ran through Sherlock's mind in the instant between the listing of names, "The Nathanial who contacted me and got me over to this island, and the old man who kicked the bucket."

"And all you have to do is present yourself to the...what? Courts? And they'll carry out the will and give you each thirty million pounds?" John sounded incredulous, "Because your name happens to be obscure?"

"It sounded crazy to me, too. That's why I came after you. A friend of mine at the office reads your blog, doctor. He's always been into that Hardy Boys stuff. Told me that if I was going to England I should stop by and pick your brain on the matter."

The fact was that Sherlock sensed something fishy but couldn't quite put his finger on it. "You've probably missed something obvious and dragging me out of the flat is just a waste of time," he grumbled, but reached for his coat anyway. He could see John smiling, and it only made him more cross. "I'm only going because I'm -"

"Bored. I know, Sherlock."

Sherlock did not like it when other people finished his sentences. He didn't like to think his train of thought was that obvious.

The next interesting fact (the first one was that only three people _in the world_, or at least the world to which the internet was readily available, had this particular last name ) was Alexander Hamilton Garrideb, who was literally a rocket scientist. Specifically, a nuclear rocket scientist who worked exclusively from home and was currently in posession of a formula for a bomb more deadly than any currently in existence.

"I haven't left my house in eight months!" He said indignently when he opened the door the three callers on his doorstep, "And I certainly won't go for something so...trivial."

"Thirty million pounds!" The American said, eyes bright with excitement. "Do you know how much that is in American dollars?"

Sherlock did but refrained from saying. John had spent a week coaching him on rhetorical questions, and he didn't want his flatmate to think his time had been wasted.

"Do you know how rich these equations are going to make me?" Alexander Hamilton Garrideb said. He didn't invite them in. Said no one was invited in, ever. The pieces of paper he had could literally destroy the world.

"It's why I do all my work by hand. God forbid anyone ever hacked my computer."

Something was starting to form in Sherlock's mind now, a suspician, and it took John and the American to convince the old scientist to go, for the American's sake. Sherlock judged that it would be best to keep out of the matter entirely. There were certain people that his observations couldn't work on, and other geniuses never took kindly to being read.

Instead he peered through the crack in the door, and from that brief sliver of space he came to believe what the scientist said. He really did have the equation that could blow up the world.

"If you're so worried about your information, John and I will stay here to protect it. You can take the most relevent papers with you, but I can produce whatever credentials necessary to convince you that we are the best men for the job."

This had gone a long way towards convincing the old man, and the American rang Nathan Garrideb, the last part of their trio, to say that the plan was ready to go.

It would be just a quick ride up to the deceased Garrideb's estate. They should be back by evening. Sherlock and John settled in for the night.

"What are you thinking, Sherlock? This whole thing's a setup and they're after the equation?"

"Of course it is, John. The leading nuclear physicist in England happens to have an unusual last name. A quick Google search reveals one other man living in America with the same name, probably a distant relation. It takes only an hour to sprinkle a false identity around the internet, and then a hurried e-mail, an invented obituary...it's all quite ordinary."

"So Nathanial Garrideb-"

"Is almost certainly not who he claims to be."

"Gotcha." John said, and then fell quiet. John had a grand gift of silence.

It was an hour, maybe two, before the break-in. Before everything went to hell in a handbasket.

Remember Alexander Hamilton? Killed in a duel? Turns out Nathanial Garrideb (pseudonym, obviously. Real name: Grant "Killer" Evans) Liked to recreate the atmosphere. Set the mood. Sherlock just hated that it came down to a shoot out. Guns were boring.

They'd been waiting in the house surrounded by the less-important details of the making of a bomb, still enough information to get the wrong country going (and, no, Sherlock didn't peek. Why would he? He had less than zero interest in the politics of the world) when the door was opened. A dupe key, no doubt.

Sherlock was on his feet in a flash, John slightly behind him, gun out. Sherlock let him keep the gun. He'd already proved he was a better-than-average marksman.

"Sherlock Holmes," Nathanial Garrideb/Killer Evans drawled, pointing his own gun in their direction. "I can't believe that fool actually went to you."

"This elaborate plot you cooked up was just a little too unbelievable." Sherlock replied, eyes never leaving the barrel of the gun. At first it had been pointed at John - after all, John was holding his own gun - but as soon as he started speaking it moved, pointed straight at him. Good. "A large sum of money for something so mundane as a slightly unusual name?"

"It was harder than you'd think. Wiping all the databases so only this one other guy existed. I've been trying to get the old man out of the lab for months."

"Yes, obviously working for North Korea. Don't even pretend to look impressed, that tatoo just above your right wrist could hardly have been gotten anywhere else." Sherlock sighed, "This was almost interesting."

"Game's not over yet," Killer Evans said, inching towards one of the large filing cabinets, "I think we're at a stalemate, mate."

"Except I've already called the police. They'll be here in four minutes." Sherlock crowed this almost triumphantly, the trump card, and that's where he was in trouble.

Because you see, Sherlock had never learned how to talk to people. Mycroft used to have to pull him out of scuffles he'd gotten into as a child, and when his older brother asked him who started it, Sherlock would blame the other party, always. But Mycroft knew, and would sigh _you were showing off again. We can be more intelligent than everyone else, but the key is to not let anyone else know. _

Sherlock never headed that advice. It had cost him split lips and bruises as a child. It nearly cost him John Watson's life now. He'd tipped his hand.

"Well," Killer Evans said, cocking an eyebrow. "That changes things, doesn't it?" And then he fired.

Sherlock was so stunned at this that for a moment he just stood there, staring. But Evans didn't even aim his gun at Sherlock, just turned to the filing cabinet and started picking the lock. "Now just see to your sidekick and let me go, alright Shirley?"

A pain-filled gasp finally made him move, and Sherlock knelt next to John. His mind, usually so clear and sure, couldn't seem to process what was going on in front of him. A bullet to the chest, obviously piercing the lung or else there wouldn't be that blood pooling behind John's teeth. But after that, nothing. He couldn't remember how to help wounds like this. All he could think of now was what John had said a year ago, when they'd first met:

_"If you were dying - if you were being murdered - in your last few seconds what would you say?"_

_"Please, God, let me live."_

And he remembered this because suddenly he was saying it, screaming it over and over in his head. Out loud, it was, "John?" Pressing on the wound, hands already slick with blood, and John cried out again, twisting away from the pain, "You'll be alright, John."

The doctor's lips were moving, gasping as he choked on his own blood. Sherlock leaned down, listening. "Evans," John gasped, eyes wide and staring at something over Sherlock's shoulder.

A click, a safety beinig released, and Sherlock closed his eyes, prepared himself.

Two seconds later it was done. Sherlock was on his feet Evan's gun held in hands soaked with John's blood. He felt like his heart was on fire, but he didn't have a heart, right? "You won't get out of this room alive," Sherlock said, quite calmly. And he wouldn't have, if John hadn't managed one more word through the blood that was clogging his throat.

"Sherlock..."

That one word, his name, the thing John always said, sighed, shouted when Sherlock got out of hand, when his deductions led to a stinging conclusion. Only John would have been able to stay his hand - there was no reason not to kill the man. It would have been deemed self-defense. It would have saved society the problem of paying for one more prisoner. He obviously deserved to die.

But that that was the difference between John and Sherlock: John could get shot and forgive the man who did it. Sherlock, upon seeing John shot, wanted the man to _burn_.

In the end, you see, Sherlock was much, much more like Jim Moriarty than John Watson.

But he didn't kill "Killer" Evans. Because John asked him to. He bashed the man over the head, hoping to God that he would wake up with a nasty headache, and then went back to kneel next to John.

He could hear sirens now, hear the crunch of gravel as they pulled up the driveway, drove onto the grass. It was a whole squadron. He hoped they brought an ambulence.

"I'm sorry, John," Sherlock said, grabbing John's hand with one of his blood-soaked ones. He didn't apologize often, but he knew that he should apologize now. John Watson deserved better, much better, but Sherlock would do everything in his power to make sure he never regretted becomming friends with this sociopath.

**.***.**

**Thanks for all the awesome reviews! It's what spurred us to write this chapter instead of reading _A Tale of Two Cities_, which is due for class tomorrow. The Adventure of the Three Garridebs, by the way, is one of our favorite of the original Sherlock Holmes stories. If you haven't read it yet, it's online. Treat yourself.**


	3. The Dying Detective

_"There's just one more thing. One more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't be dead." **John, The Reichenbach Fall **_

.***.

Sherlock didn't understand emotions. He didn't know that one person can be more worried about another than themselves.

There was a case, not so long ago, when two little girls had been raped and murdered after being kidnapped from their front porch. Sherlock had found the man, obviously, but he confided in John later that the one thing he didn't understand was why the parents didn't hear the girls cry out from inside the house.

"They wouldn't have cried out, Sherlock." John had sighed, trying to focus on making tea and not on the nine-year-olds dead in a field. "He probably said to them, 'if you scream I'll kill your sister.'"

"But why?" Sherlock asked, fascinated, "Why not just say that he'd kill _them_?"

John had his back to Sherlock, but the detective knew that he was making that face, the slightly pained one he wore whenever Sherlock was missing something glaringly obvious. "Sometimes, Sherlock, it's worse if it happens to someone else. Do you understand that? That...that _monster_...he killed the little girls with their love for each other."

"That's why you shouldn't love," Sherlock said, shrugging, turning back to his microscope. He didn't see John wince, shift, go back to making the tea.

Sherlock didn't understand emotions, which maybe goes a small way towards explaining why he would throw John's around so carelessly.

**Three: The Dying Detective**

John was having a truly horrible day. He loved being back in the hospital, loved the rush that only came when he was saving a life, loved, even, the smell of the hallways, of antiseptic and clean corners with just the faintest whiff of death. He belonged here, almost as much as he belonged on Baker Street at Sherlock's side.

But once in a while there would be one of those days. The days when absolutely everything went wrong all at once. Peter Hopper, a seven year old who had been in remission since his third birthday, had cancer once again. Francine Drake, a ninety-year-old hoping to hang on long enough to attend her great-granddaughter's wedding, died from complications from pneumonia. And, probably worst of all, a nurse barely old enough to drink had fallen in love with Sherlock the one time the detective had dragged John out of the hospital, claiming a case too important to wait.

"Don't waste your time, Anna." John had said, not looking up from the chart he was reading at the nurse's station.

"What?" The too-young girl asked, jumping a little, knowing that John had guessed her secret.

"He's...he's not normal, Anna. He'll break your heart." He was remembering Molly Hooper, who had also fallen for the dark hair and ridiculous cheekbones. He was remembering Anna's ex-boyfriend, a quiet, handsome young man nearer to Anna's own age who'd brought her flowers and kissed her and apologized over and over again for enlisting in the goodamn bloody war. He was remembering how Anna had been on the verge of tears for a month, then near-catatonic when she recieved a letter saying that the poor, sweet lad had died in a roadside bomb. And now she was fixing her affections on Sherlock? No, not if John had anything to say about it.

"Dr. Watson..." Anna said, embarrassed that her emotions could be read so easily.

"Please, Anna. He doesn't understand...he can't understand things like emotions or love or a relationship. Find somebody else. Lance LaPoe has been after you for a year now but doesn't want to make a move...might seem indecent, you know."

"You know a lot of the gossip, Dr. Watson." Anna had said, her voice more even now. And John saw how her eyes flicked to the left, to where Lance Murray was helping eighty-five-year-old alzeheimer's patient take a stroll around the floor.

"I can't stand gossip." John said, flashing a tight smile. And it was true. He was no where near the prodigious levels of Sherlock Holmes, but, being a moderatly intelligent man, he couldn't help but pick up on some of the skills Sherlock flaunted.

He'd just achieved this small victory when his mobile vibrated. He surreptitiously glanced at the screen, then put down the charts he had been holding and left the hospital without so much as a backwards glance.

DYING. COME AT ONCE.

-SH

.***.

"Sherlock!" John said, taking the stairs two at once. He'd tried calling Mrs. Hudson on the frantic ride home and had dialed the number three times before remembering she was in Calais with her book club friends. So Sherlock would be alone.

This is what John imagined: Sherlock, lying in a puddle of his own blood after being attacked by armed thugs who'd broken into the house for some information or item or other. So when he barged into the flat to see Sherlock on the couch, looking, at first glance, to be perfectly, fine, he was livid.

"Sherlock!" He growled, moving forward, and then he stopped dead when his flatmate's eyes met his. He'd seen death before, in patients, in young men in that lonely desert. Death looked like Sherlock did now, hopeless resignation.

"My God!" John murmured, already taking a step towards his friend who looked on the very edge of the abyss.

"No!" Sherlock barked, then hacked a great cough. His next words were the merest whisper, the tiniest hint of words, "Please. Don't come any closer."

"What's happened?" John asked, flabbergasted. Sherlock had been shut up in his room for two days, shouting for John to pass him things under the door. _What are you doing in there? _John had asked, coming in with a thick turkey sandwich.

_I'm developing pictures. Go away. You're letting light in._

This wasnt unusual behavior. Sherlock often got it into his head to undertake some practice or another and would lock himself away in his room if he thought John was going to do something annoying, like talk, or breathe.

"How...Sherlock, how long have you been sick?" In the days when he was locked in his room, Sherlock had often shouted at him through the door. Energetic shouts that had nothing to do with the frail, dead-looking picture of his friend John now saw in front of him.

"It came on quite suddenly," Sherlock said, his voice so low and so hoarse that John felt his own throat constrict. "No, please John, stay away!"

"I'm a doctor," John reminded him soothingly, taking another step towards the couch. "I can help you."

"It's for your own sake," Sherlock said, looking so put-out and exhausted that John couldn't help but feel a rush of sympathy for the man. "It's the Coolie disease from Serbia. Highly contagious. Infallibly deadly."

John shifted his weight and shook his head, "You think I care about that? I've treated complete strangers with contagious diseases. Why wouldn't I help -" he almost said _a friend_ but something about that word always seemed to puzzle Sherlock, so he just settled for, "you."

He took another step forward and Sherlock suddenly burst out, words thick with bitterness, "If you insist on a doctor, at least get one I can trust. You, John, have merely mediocre talents and almost no experience in exotic diseases." He harrumphed and turned away from John, so of course he couldn't see the hurt that flashed across his face in the instant before he caught himself.

"Fine," John said, backing up this time, "Fine, Sherlock. But even if you don't think I'm the man for the job, let me get someone. Owen Kent or Paula Newton or any of the best doctors in the city. You're being seen by someone, like it or not. And I'm calling Mycroft."

"He won't care," Sherlock muttered, gasping for breath.

"Well, Sherlock, it may come as a surprise to you, but there are people in the world who care weather you live or die. God knows why." John's hands were shaking when he reached into his pocket, but even so he was sure of Mycroft's power. If there was a doctor to be had who could cure Sherlock, his brother would find them.

"No!" Sherlock's hand flashed out and knocked the phone from John's hands precisely into the tall glass of water on the table. Such precise aim could only an accident, for even this small motion had taken a toll on Sherlock, who, rolled onto his side, away from John.

"You will go to Patrick Harrington in one hour. Only he may look at me. Until then, John, do not leave the flat. If you care for me."

"Oh, Sherlock." John said, pained to see his friend so sick. He desperately wanted to look the detective over (and was trying to convince himself that Sherlock's insults had been the result of the disease) but obeyed Sherlock's wishes. What else could he do?

An hour. He gazed around the flat, trying to find something, anything that might be a clue to Sherlock's condition. A liver on the counter and eyeballs on a chair, but what else was new? Everything just as he'd left it this morning when he went to Barts...except...

"What's this?" John whispered, mostly to himself since Sherlock seemed to be sleepign with his eyes open. He reached a hand towards a tiny glass box, a delicate and beautiful thing that he hadn't seen on the side-table before.

"No!" Sherlock shouted, his voice suddenly strong and robust, and this cry made John whip his hand away as if he'd been burned. "John, if you insist on touching everything shiny that catches your eye, you should go now."

"But Sherlock!"

"Now!"

An hour later John was back, surprised to see Sherlock looking better. Exhausted still, and still so frighteningly thin and pale, but whatever knowledge of death John had seen in his eyes early was gone, replaced by that old spark of intelligence that was the hallmark of Sherlock Holmes. "Did you fetch him?"

"He's right behind me."

"Then you must hide!" Sherlock said, and John could only stare. "Hide! His advice will be more frank without you hovering like a frightened mother hen." Footsteps on the stairs, and Sherlock grabbed John's wrist. His hand was icy cold to the touch, but his grip was strong. "Please, John."

Which is how John Watson ended up crouching behind the armchair like a child playing hide-and-seek, hoping that the man he'd just fetched and begged with all his heart to look at his friend wasn't very good at being 'it'.

"Well well, Sherlock," Came the drawling voice of the man John had just seen, "Looks like you're in a bit of a mess."

"Get it all out, Harrington." Sherlock said, and though his voice was still weak Watson was glad to hear something of his old coolness in it. "I know you've made a study of exotic diseases." Here Sherlock gasped, and John swore he could hear the doctor chuckle. "I'll forget about what you did to Vincent King if you give me the antidote."

"Vincent King?" Harrington said, in that sly voice John had come to expect from criminals on the verge of being turned in. "That doesn't matter anymore. You're the only one who ever figured it out, and I very much doubt you're going to last long enough to testify. Do you know how you caught the disease? That short fellow you sent - I forget his name - said that you might have been down by the water in the East End. Said you're a frequent visitor."

"Only thing I could think of. They participate in a lot of foreign trade. It was the most likely place to be infected." John wished he could reveal himself, if only to go to Sherlock, no matter what his wishes were. He sounded like he was on death's door, and whatever he'd fetched this other man for, it wasn't for doctoring.

The sly voice was beginning to get on his nerves, too. "You're wrong, Sherlock. Nothing else unusual happened? Nothing in the mail? Think, if your fried brain still allows you."

"You mean the box?" And John could see it in his mind, that delicately carved glass box he tried to pick up before Sherlock shooed him away. "Sure. It pricked my finger. Drew blood."

"And signed your death certifiate!" Crowed Harrington. There were footsteps, probably the demented man going forward to examine his handiwork, and then a cry of surprise followed by Sherlock's perfectly normal talking voice.

"The best way to act the part is to be it." The deep baritone startled John into standing up. He stared for a moment at Sherlock and then shook his head.

"I'll be in the other room." John said, moving past criminal and detective.

"But John!" Sherlock said, looking at him through what John now recognized as woman's makeup. "Don't you want to hear the solution?"

"Frankly, I don't give a damn." John said. He turned around, looked at Sherlock's incredulous face, and snorted. "You don't even understand what you did wrong? Of course you don't. Finish up gloating, Sherlock, and then call Lestrade. Maybe he can clear things up for you."

Too angry for words, John paced around the room. Picked up a medical journal and put it down after two minutes. Tried to answer an e-mail and found his hands were shaking too much to master something as complex as a keyboard. He ended up staring out the window, listening to the police pick up the criminal from their living room, the sound of Sherlock's voice coming through the door, somehow louder than all the other's.

It was very late before the door opened, though John barely noticed the time passing. "Apparently, I shouldn't have made you believe I was dying."

"Is that all you got, Sherlock?" John said, still staring out the window.

"Lestrade said that you were probably very worried about me. Which was the point. You needed to be geniunely concerned to fool Harrington. He's very clever."

"Right. And my acting skills are probably worse than my doctoring skills." John muttered. He twisted his hands together, if only to keep himself from punching Sherlock straight on.

"And Lestrade also added that I shouldn't have insulted your profession, although I had already deduced that myself."

"Quite right." John said, turning at last to face Sherlock. The makeup had been washed away but he was still incredibly thin, obviously having turned away food for the two days he'd been in the dark. Planning the whole thing. "It's funny, because I can't even make this make sense to you. If you cared about something enough it would be easier. If someone suddenly said that...oh, I don't know, humankind had been brainwashed and there would be no more crimes, ever. You would feel frantic, wouldn't you? But that's not even what it's like, because it's not like someone's losing their life."

John made sure that Sherlock was looking directly at him. The detective's eyes were wide, wondering, that expression he always wore when he wanted John to teach him something about humankind. "It would be like if someone told you I was dying and you found out it was all a trick and I was perfectly fine. Or it would be, if you had a heart,you ridiculous Tin Man." His voice cracked and the end and John shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

"John," Sherlock said, staring, trying desperately hard to understand the thing that other people seemed to know instinctively. In the end, he was much more like Jim Moriarty than John Watson - he didn't understand these emotions, didn't understand their role in people's small lives. But Sherlock tried, remembering when John had told him about two little girls who'd been killed by their love for each other and thinking he never wanted that. Never wanted to care about something so deeply he would rather die himself than see the thing come to harm.

Was he feeling that now, for John, who he'd hurt so deeply by a logical experiment used to catch a dangerous criminal? Was he feeling guilty? Could he feel guilty?

"I'm sorry," Sherlock muttered, touching John's knee. "I'm sorry for scaring you."

And he found that he was. He was truly sorry for causing so much grief in so good a man. And this was a terrifying thing for Sherlock, the Tin Man without a heart. It made him vulnerable.

And it meant that, the next time he inevitably screwed up, he felt all the worse for it.

**.***.**

**This one was based off of _The Dying Detective_ because if added to the sheer pile of Reichenbach stories we'd have to shoot ourselves. Same concept - Sherlock plays playing dead - but with a shorter time frame. Hope you all like it!**


	4. Cancer

_**Holmes**: This phone call, it's... it's my note. That's what people do, don't they? Leave a note.  
><em>_**Watson**: Leave a note when?  
><em>_**Holmes**: Goodbye, John.  
><em>_**Watson**: No. Don't—_

.***.

Sherlock had been very sick exactly once, when he was eight and got pneumonia. Mycroft had brought it home as the flu and it mutated in Sherlock's strange body, became something that could kill him.

In those weeks of red pain, of drifting in the fever-world of half-dream and half-death, Sherlock decided that he never wanted a disease to kill him, and he made Mycroft swear that if he ever got terribly sick, the older brother would kill the younger before he could waste away in the throes of something untouchable. Mycroft promised, because he thought that the little brother would die of disease that night.

He didn't, and never did. Sherlock was too active for any terrible illness to catch him. No, it was John Watson, vulnerable after his best friend's death, who had to nod along to his friend Peter Bailey, and oncologist who told him he was very sorry, but it was leukaemia. Common, ordinary, deadly leukaemia. And when that day rolled around, there was no one around to promise John Watson that they would kill him before the disease could do him in. Because by that time, John was completely alone.

**Four: Cancer**

"They're starting me on chemo tomorrow, Sherlock. It'll be hell, but I'm going to try to continue at Barts for as long as possible. And don't let on to anyone, okay? I haven't told Harry yet, though I'm fairly certain your brother knows. He seems to know everything."

John stared across the room at the shadow and tried to imagine it was Sherlock. He hadn't taken any of Sherlock's stuff - not his violin, or his skull, or his favorite gun. He hadn't kept anything of his old roommate's, old partner's. Except all the goddamned memories.

"They say it's highly treatable. A thirty percent chance I'll live, and the guy - you should have seen his face, Sherlock. Happy, like a thirty percent chance was some gift he was giving me. The alternative is that I'm dead within six months. Leaving behind - what?"

He stared blankly at the wall. His cane leaned against it. That he'd kept, because for a horrible few weeks after Sherlock's (death/betrayal) he'd limped, and badly.

But everyone remembered that Sherlock was gone. He'd left behind a huge controversy that John found hismelf at the center of more often than he would have liked. A small faction - mostly young people enamored with the idea of a superhero - had been spray painting random walls and alleys: WE BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK. And, worse: SHERLOCK LIVES. Whenever John saw one of those an ache would bloom in his chest, spreading out until it reached his toes. It took several weeks for John to recognize this as longing - Sherlock lives! That would solve all of his problems.

Because there would be no one to graffiti his name on walls. No one to debate about him in newspapers, or lament his death around the world. He was just John. Ordinary. Average. Just another death among thousands. Another statistic to jot down in that great cancer book somebody must keep somewhere.

"They would have caught it earlier, you know." He said mildly to the wall, "Except I wouldn't go into the hospital. I thought all the pain I felt -" He cut off quickly and glanced at his half-empty tea cup. He would not cry. Even here, with no one watching, he would not cry. "I thought it was all because of you. I thought it was the pain that came when you fell from the building." Fell, because John refused to believe he'd jumped.

"But it was cancer all right. In my bones! I thought it would be in my heart, though I guess I can feel the pain down to my bones. I can feel it down to my soul, to be honest." He broke off again and stared at the ceiling hopelessly.

"I need you, Sherlock. I'm dying, but you're already dead. What help is that?"

Why could the great Sherlock Holmes help everyone but his Boswell?

.***.

"I have to help him!" Sherlock wan't shouting - he wasn't a shouter by nature, more cold and quiet. Mysterious, you know, and aloof, as if human matters didn't faze this alien with the sharp cheek bones.

But John's human matters struck him to the core. He'd been cooped up in various hide-outs in London, curtesy of dear Molly, who'd also checked in on John from time to time. And because she worked at Barts, she knew that he'd been diagnosed. She knew that he was dying.

And Molly couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't keep him here to try to protect others from assissins with no faces. John was already staring down the barrel of a gun labelled CANCER, and there's nothing worse than facing that end alone.

"Fine."

Sherlock looked at her, confused. He'd obviously prepared some kind of speech, some soliloquey that he could wax poetic on to change her mind, but Molly didn't want to fight anymore. She'd been in love with Sherlock, which is why she'd done all this in the first place, but it was hard not to fall for stoic, empathetic, good John Watson. A John Watson who'd been broken into a thousand pieces by the man sitting in front of him.

So she didnt' let him have his monologue. She just gave him the key to the door, hugged him, and told him to be careful.

"This isn't a puzzle you can solve." Whispering into his ear was hard - he was much taller than her - but she managed it. "Just be there for him. It's his turn now."  
>And Sherlock left, nodding as if he could possibly understand.<p>

.***.

The pretty red-headed nurse whose name John used to know wanted to call him a cab, but his new apartment (he couldn't live in Baker Street, though he paid rent on it every month, an extravagence he couldn't really afford, but although the rooms were too filled with Sherlock, he also couldn't let the old place go and, anyway, Mycroft was helping on the side) was only a couple of blocks away through a shady park. He wasn't that sick yet.

About halfway home, his body informed him that he was actually that sick. When had it happened? When had the drugs and the cancer become too much for a vetern who should overcome such things easily?

The doctors had been hopeful at first. This brand of cancer had a 30% mortality rate. John was young, fit, healthy. Everything shoudl work out. Until it didn't. Until it seemed like, although his brain wanted to live, his body wanted to die (after all, the cancer was a part of him. John was no oncologist, but he remembered the basics from back in his med school rotations - cancer was just a cell gone rogue. Hard to kill because it's actually a part of the patient.)

He was getting weaker. He'd cut back on shifts. Soon he'd have to tell people, those few that were left that cared. Harry. Mrs. Hudson. Lestrade, who would still knock on his door twice a month with a cup of tea already in hand.

Of course, what his body wanted was Sherlock. In the days and weeks after his death, John had wished Sherlock alive and, in the darkest of nights, wished himself dead. He had never believed people when they said things like heartache. How could a heart ache after a loss? And John had lost people before - patients in the war. Friends. Young men who didn't deserve to die.

But Sherlock...John wasn't used to having best friends. A kind of symbiotic relationship, where both parties relied on each other. And with Sherlock gone, there was no one to tell about the disease that was trying its hardest to kill him. There was no one to care.

Sherlock sat next to him on the bench, which was fine. It happened a couple of times a week, usually in the privacy of his own apartment. Something about the drugs and the ache in his heart made the wish manifest into reality, a shadow Sherlock there to comfort him as he felt like cancer was oozing out of his pores. "I'm going to join you soon." John said, as he said most times now. "And the afterlife had better be amazing after this Hell."

"John..." The shadow breathed, and John stood up. When dreams begin to talk, it's time for some coffee and a nap (nap! Like a child, but his body demanded it.) Except he couldn't. His body, still weak from the drugs poured into it, radiation burned into its skin, rebelled, began to collapse.

And that's when the shadow grabbed his arm. "I'm so sorry, John."

Shadows don't talk, and Sherlock never apologized. Unable to cope with this paradox (or maybe he could blame it on the drugs) John Watson, for the first time in his life, fainted.

.***.

"Why'd you do it?" They were sitting in the Baker Street apartment, the first place Sherlock had thought to bring the unconscious man he suddenly had in his arms. John refused to drink the tea, was just staring at Sherlock as if looking away would make the shadow melt. "Why'd you leave?"

"I was protecting you," Sherlock breathed. For his part, Sherlock was horrified by the man in front of him. To him, John was the shadow. The bones were too prominent on his face, the skin too pale. "Moriarty had sniper out...they would have killed you."

There would be more questions later. There would be anger later. There would be blame and long talks and arguments later. But right now John just looked down at his own frail body, then up at Sherlock. "Thank you for coming back."

"I heard you were sick." Sherlock said. His hands twitched, aching to examine, to poke, to do his own testing. "I...I didn't know it was this serious."

"Six months, the doctors say." John tried to sound brave, managed scared instead. "Unless we get a miracle."

Sherlock tried his best to hold back the snort of derision on the tip of his tongue. John knew how he felt about miracles.

"I wouldn't scoff yet." John said, sounding more robust than he had in weeks. "We've already had one miracle today. If the dead can walk, maybe cancer can be cured, too."

Sherlock looked at his partner, his friend, and smiled so John wouldn't know that the heart he claimed he didn't have was breaking at the sight of this small optimism. He should never have hidden, he knew that now. And, although he knew it was illogical, he blamed John's illness on his disappearing act.

"I'm sorry." Sherlock said again, apologizing for John's illness, his worry, his grief. Apologizing for not being there on that terrible day when the diagnosis came and John had no where to turn and went to Sherlock's grave and cried and cried. Apologizing for the nights spent alone, the days spent dodging reporters like that horrid Kitty. Apologizing, because it was out of character, and he never apologized to anyone except John.)

And, because John was a much better man than Sherlock (Sherlock, after all, had more in common with that late spider Moriarty than any human being alive) he accepted this with a nod. "Just...just don't leave again? At least not until I kick the bucket."

"You won't die." Sherlock said, quirking a familiar smile. "I'm on the case. And I always win."

John barked out a laugh and drank the lukewarm tea.

Six months later, he was still alive. A year later, he was officially in remission.

And John never regretted battling the Big C. Not when he felt like he was throwing up his organs. Not when the pain seemed to radiate from every inch of his body. Not when the chemo so mucked up his imune system that the common cold nearly killed him. Because he always credited his cancer with Sherlock's return. He would have paid any price for that miracle.

**.***.**

**We couldn't resist a Sherlock-comes-back story. The peer pressure was too great.**


	5. Drugs

_...Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. **A Scandal in Bohemia**  
><em>

.***.

Sherlock learned very early on that words could make people leave him alone. But he'd also learned early on that sometimes words weren't enough.

When he was seven, Mycroft, noticing that his brother was coming home with notes from parents and teachers and black eyes, tried to teach him how to box. And it was one of the few things the brothers ever did together. Mycroft personally didn't care for the sport, finding it all too...messy. But Sherlock had innate talent, and was soon besting his much older brother soundly every time.

When he was twelve, he transferred to a prep school with a new set of bullies who knew from the outset that he was a freak who knew all the answers and didn't even pretend that anyone else was his intellectual equivalent. One of these bullies stole his backpack which had his anatomy book and fourteen species of beetles that Sherlock was looking forward to disecting. So he punched him in the arm, the kidneys, the chin, and he toppled down the stairs. Sherlock managed to snatch up his backpack before he was hauled down to yet another office where he was told yet again that he didn't fit in and was better off elsewhere.

That was the year Sherlock attended four private schools.

When he was sixteen, and had almost given up on the human race completely (he'd long since given up the notion of _friends_) finding them all insufferably boring, he actually picked a fight. To see what would happen if he told this boy that his brother was secretly seeing his girlfriend. The chaos that insued from that was predictable and boring, but at least it was an experiment that kept Sherlock interested enough to see if his hypothesees were correct.

He caused discord for fun, which was something very like what Moriarty would do, which was something that John, if he ever heard about it, would shake his head at.

Nine months after John almost died of cancer and Sherlock came back from the dead, Sherlock Holmes purposefully punched his only friend in the world.

**Four: Drugs**

John rarely got to watch crap telly anymore, between helping Sherlock with the cases and picking up a shift here and there at the hospital (he was on his way to becoming a full-fledged doctor on staff there again, if only his psychologist would sign the papers saying that no, he did not have PTSD following the war/Sherlock's death/the cancer thing) So he was enjoying the rare empty flat by making himself a cup of tea and watching the sort of abysmal telly that comes on at eleven o'clock.

And he fell asleep, because between helping Sherlock with cases and picking up a shift here and there at the hospital, John Watson was a very busy man. That's the simply, stupid reason why he was woken up when Sherlock came stumbling in at three in the morning.

Sherlock Holmes rarely stumbled. He bounded, glided, dove, ran, raced, but he didn't stumble. He was too refined for that. Too inhuman. But he was all too human tonight.

John was off the couch and groping for his gun a heartbeat after Sherlock crashed through the door. "Sherlock! You scared me to death!" He willed his body to untense, cursing every one of the battles he'd witnessed in Afghanistan, and moved forward a little. "Are you hurt?" It was the only explanation he could come up with for Sherlock's less-that-graceful entrance. Until Sherlock actually looked at him, and John actually looked back at bloodshot eyes.

After that diagnosis took less than a second. Sherlock may be one of the best minds on the planet, but John wasn't too shabby as doctors go, and he knew the effects of drugs when he saw them. He withdrew the helpful hand he was putting out - suddenly, Sherlock's state was like a slap in the face. "You're high." It wasn't a question.

"I don't need a lecture, John." Sherlock said, brushing by him, hitting his shoulder in a way that definitely didn't seem like a mistake.

"I think you do." John backed up, planted himself in front of the taller man. "I know you don't like to hear this, Sherlock, but you're just as human as the rest of us. And I'm not losing another friend to _this_." He reached into Sherlock's overcoat, the inside pocket where he hoped he wouldn't but knew in his heart he would find a little bag of white dust.

"Let me innumerate the ways in which you are wrong," Sherlock said, grabbing the bag back with a speed John wouldn't have thought a man in his state could possibly possess. "One: I am not like other humans, John. My brain is has pathways that others do not possess. I have scans to prove it."

"Do you even hear yourself? Do you know that rationalization is the first defense of an addict? Sherlock, just because you're smart doesn't mean -"

"I'm not just _smart_, John. A child who's good at algebra is smart. A dog who can perform a few tricks is smart. My brain is _different_. Drugs affect the brain. Therefore, they affect me differently. I am still rational, and I am definitely not addicted."

"Yeah, about that," John moved with Sherlock, who attempted to go around John but the doctor needed to have this out right now. The _genius_ needed to understand. "I thought you'd kicked the habit. I thought it was just nicotine patches."

"I ran into my old dealer and didn't see the point in saying no." Sherlock said, shrugging. And it was that shrug that did it, that who-really-gives-a-damn, I'm-so-smart-it-doesn't-matter move of the shoulders. John could just shake him.

"Didn't see the point in saying no? So you just say _yes_? After being sober for...for at least two years!" And then John knew and sighed, and shook his head, "Don't tell me. You were bored."

"Excruciatingly." Sherlock said, almost sighed, whimpered, and for a moment John almost felt bad for him, almost relented.

"This isn't the answer, Sherlock. If you're bored, take one of the cases I have flooding my inbox, talk to some of the people ringing our bell day and night. Work for your brother if that's what it takes. But as a doctor - as your _friend-"_

"I thought I told you," Sherlock said coldly (proof of how drugs can change people, John thought later, but that didn't make it hurt less) "I don't have _friends_."

John's eyes shuttered closed at that, and he shook his head. "You're high. I'll excuse that." What he wanted to do was knock some sense into the younger man. Instead, he just reached for the bag again. "Come on, Sherlock. There are other ways to make life less boring."

When his fingers closed around the small sack of white dust for the second time, Sherlock punched him.

He was a good boxer. A very good boxer. He broke John's nose with one swing.

John fell, more out of shock than the pain that suddenly blossomed across his face.

Sherlock stared, and suddenly whatever haze that drug had put him in was broken by the sight of John, _his_ John, lying on the floor, hands desperately trying to stem the flow of the blood. Blood, which in Sherlock's drug-haze, looked like rubies collecting in a puddle around his only friend.

Sherlock reached towards John. This is what he wanted, right? For life not to be boring anymore. But suddenly life was so complicated, and he had no idea what to do about any of it. Did he apologize first or patch John up? Did he get a washcloth or call a doctor? Did he...?

So he did the only thing that he knew how to do after he got in too deep. He walked away.

.***.

He came back ten minutes later and sat down across from John, who had his head down and was trying to stop the blood flow with a carton of tissues.

"You should lean your head back." Sherlock said uncertainly. He worked with cadavers, not living people. Not John (and, God, seeing John's red blood staining the tissues, knowing he was the person to make John bleed...his stomach clenched at the thought.)

"Actually," John said, his voice made muffled and mumbly by the tissues. "If you lean your head back, you risk drowning on your blood."

"Oh." They were quiet longer, with Sherlock examining John's face closely and John trying to avoid Sherlock's eyes. "Lestrade says the Yard has been betting on when I break my new toy."

"Sherlock..." John said wearily. It was now 3:30 in the morning.

"I don't want to break you." Sherlock said earnestly.

"I'm not a toy, Sherlock. I thought I was your friend." Now John was glad for the tissue in front of his face. He could blame his voice cracking on the obstacle.

"Lestrade says that friends don't call friends at three in the morning." Sherlock said this as if he was telling John about a new type of tobacco he'd catalogued. Just another fact for the archives. "He also says you shouldn't punch your friend. I knew that."

John was silent for a long time, then raised his eyes to meet Sherlock's. "People have told me to stay away from you. That you're crazy. When you..." He closed his eyes for a second, "When you went away, everyone told me you were a fraud, that you'd _played_ me. But I always knew that you had a limit. A line you wouldn't cross." He closed his eyes again, turned his face away, "I thought _I_ was the line."

Sherlock's hand twitched helplessly. "I regret my actions from tonight, John. All of them. You -" He swallowed. This wasn't an easy thing to do, "You were right. I shouldn't consider myself to be above the influence of drugs. And I shan't partake in that vice again."

John snorted at the word _shan't_. Only Sherlock could use archaic terminology when high.

"And I deeply regret hurting you." Sherlock looked at the damage he'd inflicted and looked away again. He'd _punched John_. John Watson, the only man who could stand him. Who liked him. "I do...you are my only friend."

John lowered the Kleenex. His nose was swollen and there was already the beginnings of two black eyes. "You can't just...dismiss me, Sherlock. At Baskerville, when you..." he coughed, sputtered. He still hated to think about that time, "when you left...if I'm your friend, Sherlock, then you'll let me help you. When you feel you can't trust yourself. When you feel like you have to play martyr. When you're bored. Just...tell me. We can work it out." He offered Sherlock a thin smile.

In that instant, Sherlock knew what Lestrade meant when he'd picked up the phone at three in the morning, complaining about the time and being woken up. When Sherlock explained the situation, Lestrade had listened patiently and at the end of it all said, "I don't know why the man stays around you, Sherlock. You don't deserve John Watson."

And he didn't. He could think and deduce and plan ten times faster than the trauma doctor, but the things like compassion and forgiveness that came so easily to John were lost on Sherlock. And he found himself speechless when, after getting high, after denouncing John as a friend, after _breaking his nose_, John was willing to forgive him.

His relief must have shown on his face because John's suddenly got stormy again. "Don't get me wrong, Sherlock. I was in the army. I know how to throw a punch. And you're going to get one hell of one. Later." John stood up, yawning, knowing he wouldn't be able to sleep with the pounding headache that came with a broken nose.

He patted Sherlock's shoulder. "No more drugs. Deal?"

Sherlock didn't deserve John Watson. "Deal."

**.***.**

**just a couple more chapters. there are many, many ways sherlock can screw up, but he'll get it right eventually.**


	6. Asking the Wizard for a Heart

_"You need me or you're nothing — because we're just alike, you and I. Except you're boring. You're on the side of the angels." **Moriarty, The Reichenbach Fall**  
><em>

.***.

When Sherlock came back from the dead to find his best (only) friend with one foot in that door, he'd realized his mistake. It's just that he'd never had a friend like John before, and the more he examined his life the more he realized that this was something _good_. Not everyone got to have a best friend/sidekick who would call them out when they got over-the-top, who would make them tea and understand silence and sigh when he put bullets in the wall.

So he fought for John, and he didn't make it easy. For one, as soon as Sherlock was back he blew John's cover wide open. No, he wouldn't let him keep his secret anymore. He told Mycroft and Lestrade, Molly and Mrs. Hudson, the hospital and the yard. He got the best doctors and used Mycroft's lingering guilt to get better doctors and researched new theories himself because there was no way he would let something this good slip through his fingers. Before John he was a freak. With John he was a freak with a friend who spent his time convincing him he could be better than he was. And after John...Sherlock couldn't even contemplate what would happen if there was an After.

And John did get better, he did, but there was a lot of near-misses, a lot of nights spent thinking that this would be John's last night in the world, and this time there wasn't a trick pulled, there wasn't a coming back. This would be absolutely, terrifyingly final.

There was one night, when John had been fed up with the hospital and demanded and pleaded until Sherlock smuggled him back to Baker Street. John had gotten up, too thin and too pale, and made tea, and Sherlock took out his violin and played John's favorite piece, and for a moment John wasn't sick and dying and Sherlock wasn't sick with guilt and they were just two friends. Two healthy friends.

And then that night John took a turn for the worse, and Sherlock called an ambulance but he was sure, very sure, that John would die before it got there. And when his friend looked to him for reassurance the words stuck in his throat and fear overwhelmed him and he panicked and fled John's hurt expression. Because even though Moriarity was dead, and Sherlock had seen his brains splattered on the cement, he was still more like the ex-criminal consultant than the man he shared a flat with.

(except that was wrong, wasn't it? suddenly Sherlock wasn't so sure, suddenly he thought that Moriarty might leave a sick man's room, yes, but not because he felt like his heart would burst. Sherlock liked to pretend he didn't have a heart. Moriarty actually didn't have one.)

Very long and terrifying story made short: John lived, and forgave Sherlock again for being...Sherlock. Sherlock felt guilty, something that didn't happen all that often before John came around and now happened _all the time_.

And maybe that was progress of a sort, because when John was shot saving Sherlock's life, the detective wasn't a robot and he wasn't heartless and he wasn't a freak. He was almost...normal. Almost human. And that was a step. the only question was: was it a step forward or back?

**Five: Asking the Wizard for a Heart**

Finally, Sherlock had broken this case and John wasn't even here to see it. He was at the hospital, because a year after you miraculously beat the cancer odds you have to make sure it doesn't come back. That's what John had said anyway, on his way out, and it was only half an hour later when Sherlock's brain actually processed the words that he realized that maybe he should have offered to go with him. There was a chance, a slight one, but a chance that the cancer would be back, would not have been eradicated at all. And maybe John wanted someone with him when they said it this time.

But Sherlock was thinking about a case, putting the pieces together, and he only thought about John for a moment before he was thinking about Woodrow Wilson and wooden blocks and Woodstock...

The sun had moved from the couch to the door before Sherlock looked up, knowing where they could find the kidnapped children and not knowing where John was so he could gloat to him. FIGURED IT OUT. COME HOME. -SH

He whirled around his room, picking up his coat, his scarf, his hat, sending out another text to Lestrade, and finally John messaged him back. STILL AT HOSPITAL. -JW

And Sherlock took that at face value. John's appointment had run late, or he'd nipped in to the nurse's station and teased the girls a bit, because they all doted on him and everyone knew it. Or he'd gone up to the chief of surgery and asked for his job back again. Any number of things, and Sherlock wasn't one to get worried over nothing.

An hour later he was out at the crime scene, where the kidnapped children were but the kidnappers themselves weren't, and he was talking to Lestrade about what they might have missed, what the Yard might have missed and neglected to mention to Sherlock, when John appeared at his elbow looking wan and tired. Lestrade shot him a sympathetic look at gave the shorter man his scarf. "You dragged the poor sod out of the house, Sherlock? You trying to kill him?"

"I'm fine, Lestrade." John murmured, flashing a smile, and Sherlock had taken this at face value as well, not noticing the track of pin-pricks on John's arm as he tugged the scarf around his neck. Not noticing the hard line of his jaw as he clenched his teeth against a secret. "What did I miss?"

"We found the children. Four were dead." Sherlock brushed past this, never really understanding why four under-eights dead should be such a big deal, why it should make John blanch like that and Lestrade purse his lips, shake his head. It wasn't their kids. "Two were alive. I'd going to talk to him now."

"You're not interrogating a child!" John snapped.

"I'm perfectly capable of talking to children. I'll use small words."

"They just went though a - Sherlock, they were _kidnapped_. Kidnapped, as in taken and held captive and terrified. Do you have any idea how a child would react to that?"

"Do you?"

John opened his mouth and Lestrade put a hand on his arm. "I already sent Donovan over to the girl. She'll get a description if any of us will." At John's incredulous look, the DI shrugged. "Some people can feign sympathy better than this one can." He jerked his head at Sherlock, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and wandered over to the media that was waiting just on the other side of the police tape.

"This doesn't make sense." Sherlock said, scanning the area, and John let him, thinking about the piece of paper in his pocket and the test he took, thinking that maybe it wouldn't so bad the second time around if he had Sherlock this time. But he was still so tired from the last rounds he'd gone with cancer, and still so ridiculously thin and sick and pale. He still wasn't working and he was still useless and this...this would only increase the time until he could become a productive citizen of the world again and he was _tired_, so tired of being the one holding everyone else back.

"There's nothing." Sherlock said, and John waited for him to continue. Sherlock wasn't talking to him, not really. If John wasn't there, the consulting detective would literary be talking to the side of the building. He just wouldn't have someone to _ooh_ and _aah_ after he finished his soliloquy.

"There's no sign of struggle, or even a hurried exit. There's the snow, but no prints other than ours and the children's." How he could tell this John would never know. More than a dozen of people had traipsed through the freshly fallen snow, and the individual treads were ruined beyond repair. "So how did they leave?"

"Maybe an underground tunnel?" John said idly. Sometimes tossing out random theories spurred Sherlock's thought process, or at least made him surprised enough to think outside the immediate box.

"No, I've been inside, there's no basement, just the one floor. So where could -" He whirled around and started striding towards Lestrade, that stupid_ I-know-something-no-one-knows _look on his face, and John couldn't take it, he just stood there and thought that, if he'd had a normal friend, they would have asked him about his doctor's appointment right away. He knew it was petty. He knew there were dead children and kidnapped children at stake. But he also knew that Sherlock wasn't doing this for the kids. He was doing it because the only thing Sherlock Holmes was really afraid of was being bored. And sometimes he wished that he would put that aside for once and notice that John was desperately trying to hold it together._  
><em>

But even as he was thinking this he saw everything happening, as if in slow motion. He saw the little red dot, the one he was so used to after that horrible time of Moriarty. And Sherlock was already so far away...

Truth? John did it for the most selfish reasons imaginable (but weren't all good deeds selfish at heart? think about it.) He did it because he didn't want to fight cancer alone. He did it because he couldn't live without Sherlock again, not with that hole in his heart and his soul, because he'd lost his best friend and also that special niche he'd carved out for himself. Wish Sherlock, he was the sidekick to a super hero. Without him, he was John Watson, a doctor who didn't heal people and a soldier who got kicked out of a war.

Just so everyone understands why John didn't think taking a bullet for Sherlock Holmes was heroic at all.

"Wh-John!" Sherlock was surprised, and maybe there was even a little annoyance in his tone, thinking this was some prank, another thing Sherlock didn't quite get, like why John thought snow was beautiful or why being excited about crime wasn't socially acceptable. Then he heard the shot, or registered the shot, and everyone screamed and ducked automatically, as one, and Sherlock disentangled himself from John and wasn't annoyed in the slightest any more._  
><em>

"John. _John!_" He pulled his arm out from under John's torso and found the hand sticky with blood. "No..." It was a whisper, and it was strange because Sherlock didn't usually deny facts right in front of his eyes, even for a moment. John Watson was obviously shot, and Sherlock didn't want to hear any of it.

He rolled John onto his back as Lestrade came over. "What the hell was that?" There were more shots, as the police on the scene stormed the building and the perp went down in a hail of bullets just like he wanted. If you have to die, might as well take some people out with you.

Sherlock ignored him because John's eyes were darting around, desperately looking for something to focus on. "Sherlock. You're all right."

"What did you do that for?" Sherlock snarled, taking off his coat and wrapping it around John and pressing down hard.

"Don't - I'm not cold, Sherlock, it's okay." And then he let out a scream that made Sherlock's insides turn to ice and he suddenly, inanely, remembered a night a week before when John had happened across _The Wizard of Oz_ on the telly. _"I think I'd ask the Wizard for courage." _John had said, staring at the sparkling Emerald City. Sherlock had meant to ask why, because John was one of the bravest people he knew, when his flatmate glanced over at him and smiled over his cup of tea. _"Maybe you should ask him for a heart_."

John might have just gotten his wish. This is what a broken heart felt like - hearing your friend's scream split the frigid Winter air. Feeling how warm his blood was through the fabric of your favorite coat. Hearing his whole body creak, give way under your intense pressure and knowing that it wasn't enough, couldn't be enough. It was a through-and-through shot. Right near the heart.

"Sherlock, the ambulance is close." And there were sirens, in another life Sherlock might have heard them. Here he could just hear John laughing from his hospital bed about puking up his lungs, joking about the taste of the poisons they put in his body to kill the rogue cells. He could see John rolling his eyes at him as they played Cluedo and Sherlock "invented" his own ending. He could hear him murmur to the nurse when he thought Sherlock was sleeping, asking if she would drape one of his blankets over his friend Sherlock Holmes, he didn't want him to catch a chill. How could these things come so easily to John and be so difficult for Sherlock, who even now, with John looking up at him, eyes confused and wild, just wanted to run off into the night, flee those eyes and the responsibilities that came with it.

Friends don't protect you. Friends make you weak and vulnerable and _God_ it felt like his heart was being broken in two when he heard John bite back another gasp of pain and Sherlock just pressed down harder and hated himself for it. "What did you do that for?" He said, concern coming out like anger and John flinched, in too much pain to decipher Sherlock's emotions as he usually did.

"I s-saw the sniper..." John stuttered, and Sherlock could hear shouts now, could hear Lestrade directing people over to where they crouched in the snow.

And Sherlock wanted to say _I told you so_. He wanted to say that this is what you get for having friendships and feelings - bleeding out in the February snow with cameras clicking, catching every agonizing moment. He wanted to tell John that he had that courage all along, because he didn't even have to think, he just threw himself at Sherlock, knowing he'd be shot. He couldn't say anything though, just backed away as the paramedics came, frightened and shaking, and Lestrade put a hand on his arm and rubbed it but Sherlock wasn't cold, even though he didn't have a jacket. He actually felt as if the blood was boiling in his veins and he needed to run or hit something.

"Let me drive you to the hospital."

And Sherlock didn't insist on staying with John, so he didn't see his best and only friend die in the ambulance and get resurrected. He didn't say he had to stick by the man who'd taken a bullet for him. He meekly followed the Detective Inspector and stared out the window as they sped through London. It was starting to snow again. John would have said it was pretty.

Later that night, John would wake up and turn to see Sherlock in the corner, hovering like a vampire or a guardian angel. "Thanks for staying with me," He'd murmur before falling back into the drug-induced state that passed for sleep, and he wouldn't see Sherlock's stricken face as he tried to think of how he would break the news to John that he'd done everything wrong from the beginning. How do you innumerate your mistakes to the better man? How would he tell John that he might have survived the bullet, but the cancer was back, all the tests said so, and now that the Wizard had given Sherlock a heart he didn't know if he could stand to watch his friend die.

**.***.**

**this was very train-of-thought. and a little disjointed. but we just watched sherlock and it seemed like an appropriate evolutionary step. hope ya'll like it.**


	7. Heaven's Door

_**Moriarty**: I'll _burn_ you. I will burn.. the _heart_ out of you.  
><strong>Sherlock<strong>: I've been reliably informed that I don't have one.  
><strong>Moriarty<strong>: Oh, but we both know that's not quite true._

.***.

Sherlock sat next to the guy who'd spent his life doing everything right, and the detective was wondering if that man was going to survive the night.

When he was in sixth-form, there'd been a boy in his class like John. Intelligent, handsome, moral, he'd tried for a fortnight to befriend the freak, even going so far as to invite him to his house to study. "I don't need to study, Sebastian." Sherlock had said, not even deigning to look at the boy. The particles under a microscope initerested him more.

"Obviously," Sebastian said, laughing (but not laughing like the other boys did, cruely. Sherlock could hear the smile in Sebastian's laugh) "I thought you might need...you know. A friend."

What Sherlock needed was for Sebastian to sod off. "I don't have _friends_." Twenty years later, he'd say this again, and he wouldn't mean it.

Sebastian was relentless, "I can see that. Thought you might want a change." He hopped up onto the counter, scattering petri dishes. "I know you think you're smarter than us, Holmes. You are. But even geniuses have to get lonely." He put a hand on Sherlock's his brain made the deductions _homosexual, repressed due to religious background, older brother, drank tea with honey an hour ago_. Information overload as he never usually had, but people didn't normally touch him. Not his brother, or mother. Not anyone really, in an unspecified time period that may have been very long.

"Gay," he said quietly, and that made Sebastian take his hand back, stand up. Sherlock slid his eyes over to him and shrugged his shoulders. "Leave me alone."

Sebastian left him alone. Maybe because he'd had feelings for the weird kid in the back of the room, the brilliant, brooding boy who always seemed immensely bored. Probably because he was afraid that Sherlock would say something to the other boys. He had nothing to worry about. Sherlock did not find sexual orientation interesting enough to spread around the school.

The point is that Sebastian was a good person. A genuinely good person who went on to play professional football for ten years, come "out" during his career, winning international fame, praise, and occasional devotion. He started a charity. He donated money to cancer. He made an "It Gets Better" video. And one time, he'd tried to befriend a freak.

Sebastian had died when Sherlock had been pretending to be dead. Shot in a back alley. Probably a hate crime. The murderers were never arrested, despite the event being the lead story of every major news network in most countries around the world. And Sebastian was a good person, in every sense of the word.

If such a good man could die, if a man beloved by the world could be murdered in cold blood...well, what would stop an ordinary hero from dying from the inside out? Could the love of a freak who considered John Watson his best friend, his only friend, be enough to stop a twisted turn of fate?

(it should be noted that, by this time, Sherlock had stopped thinking of himself in the terms of the late Jim Moriarty. not that he was anyone's John Watson, but Moriarty never cared about anything enough to watch it all night, praying to a god he was sure didn't exist that that thing would survive the night. no, Sherlock wasn't a Jim Moriarty. his life would be so much easier if he was.)

**Seven: Heaven's Door**

"Bored, Sherlock?" John asked, smiling up at him from his position on the couch. Sherlock wondered if John knew he looked a couple inches to the left of death.

The truth was he wasn't bored at all. "No." He went on staring at John, looking at the skin that clung to his pale cheeks, looking at the way the old shirt fluttered in to where most people had a bit of a belly and John had nothing, nothing at all. The cancer had eaten everything.

"Well - stop looking at me. I'm not going to spontaneously combust."

"You're dying."

"Sure. But I'm dying very slowly. It will probably be as interesting as watching grass grow." John raised an eyebrow at Sherlock and shook his head, "You once watched grass grow, didn't you?"

"Monocotyledonous Poaceae grows at a rate of .02 centemeters per day." Sherlock said distractedly. John laughed a little at that. Even his laugh was raspy.

Sherlock waited for his friend to get his breath back, picking idly at the strings on his violin. He thought about spending the day composing, but remembered that John usually slept through the early part of the afternoon. When Sherlock was in that zone, he didn't notice things like human sleep patterns, and he wouldn't wake John up for anything.

"For God's sake, Sherlock. Here." John pushed over his laptop, open to a page of emails all asking for the dead-and-back-again Sherlock Holmes for help. "Pick one. Any one. And investigate, please. You're driving me mad."

"But -"

"I once watched your grave for four hours." John said, his voice low, "And that didn't make you come back. Watching and wishing doesn't get you must more than disappointment, Sherlock. Someone must have told you that."

"I was never one for wishing."

"No, but you're doing it now. Look, this thing either kills me this time around or it doesn't. I've beat it once, and that was mostly on my own. I think -" he paused here for breath, which (no pun intended) took the wind out of his argument. The two sat looking at each other for a time, neither daring to say the next word.

"So you want me to leave while your body gets sicker?" He was about to describe the decay John's body was experiencing at that very moment, but held his tongue at the last second. Somehow, he didn't think that information would be helpful.

"Well, I was thinking an easy case. Robbery or embezzling. Something that doesn't have deep ties to some criminal mastermind in the underworld." John smiled, looking rather like a child's jack-o-lantern, though Sherlock would never tell him that. "Look, this is as much for my own good as yours. I can't have you staring at me night and day and, frankly, daytime telly is crap. I'm sending you out so you can come back with interesting details about the outside world."

"We have very different ideas of what "interesting details" are, John."

"Yes, well, a hint: enumerating the two hundred and forty different types of tobacco is not what I'm looking for."

"Two hundred forty three." Sherlock said, lips twitching into a smile because he knew that John knew that he would correct him, which was one step towards acquiescing. Yes, he was bored, but apparently feelings come with some level of paranoia. He had the strange notion that the moment he left John's side his friend would slip away from him.

"Whatever the number, I'm thinking more about gossip." Lestrade usually dropped by the flat once or twice a week, bringing coffee and biscuits. He and John would sit at the kitchen table and Lestrade would tell him the gossip about Scotland Yard and John be grateful that there were still people in the world that didn't treat him as if he was about to break into a thousand pieces.

(usually when Lestrade dropped by, Sherlock would hover awkwardly in the corner of the room, looking at the pair and wondering why he couldn't just sit with them and pretend everything was fine. then he would remember that John's cells had gone rogue, remembered that he was dying, no matter how well he hid it, and his whole body would go cold at the thought of burying the only true friend he'd ever had in his life.)

"So do you want to hear about a final exam stolen from the headmaster's office or a woman looking for her husband?" Sherlock asked, giving in. Mostly he was taking this case to see how John beamed at him just then, except that same expression made him swallow hard and look away. This was John on death's door, and here Sherlock was looking at crime as if everything was okay.

He stood up, got his coat, his keys. "I thought you were married to your work, Sherlock." John chided fondly, and Sherlock pondered about the fact that he was proclaimed as the brilliant detective but John could remember words said at a dinner nearly four years past. "I thought you didn't have a heart."

"You're confusing me with a certain spider." Sherlock corrected. "There was a boy once who called me Lord Snow. Apparently I have a heart, it's just frozen." And thawing evermore as John grew sicker.

"That couldn't have been the worst nickname you got in school."

"It wasn't." But it was given to him by Sebastian Snider, in the spring of that year when he'd tried to be Sherlock's friend. Somehow, it was that name that had always stuck with him.

Sherlock lingered by the door. "I'm _fine_, Sherlock. If you don't go I'll shoot you."

"Your gun is in your bedroom. I'm fairly certain I could incapacitate you before you could retrieve it." But that reminded Sherlock that not all threats came from within one's own body, and he got John's gun and put it on the table next to his head. "If anyone but me comes through that door, shoot them."

"Mrs. Hudson is a good woman, Sherlock." John smiled and Sherlock had to fight to keep from returning it. He had to keep some semblance of normality, and one way to do that was to keep his emotions well below the surface. Become Lord Snow again. "And anyway," John continued, "I've been in this business with you long enough to know which people I should shoot." John shook his head, "What a strange life we lead."

Sherlock had to leave then, or he never would have been able to shut the door on a dying man.

.***.

There are a couple of sad truths in this world: good people die, often younger than they're meant to. Time and tea heal just about anything but grief and a broken heart. It's hard to recognize what a good thing you have until it's gone. And it's always in that moment when you think it's safe enough to look away that the shit hits the fan.

Some part of Sherlock must have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, because when his phone rang - rang, not a text message as he'd been receiving from John for the last three hours. And he knew instinctively it was bad news.

Lestrade had been talking to him, asking him about the case (and whether it was the exam or the missing husband Sherlock no longer remembered) but Sherlock just walked away, leaving the detective inspector mid-sentence. "Yes," he said into the phone, and a voice in his head that sounded exceptionally like John Watson reminded him that _yes_ is not a greeting. He didn't care.

"I just picked up some milk because you're always forgetting that he and he likes milk in his tea and he was shaking so hard - Sherlock, I brought him to the hospital. His organs are shutting down."

Molly's voice faded, probably because the phone slipped from Sherlock's fingers. Lestrade, who'd been staring at him, came over and put a hand on his shoulder and said something that Sherlock didn't hear because the last words the phone had uttered were _his organs are shutting down_.

"Is it John?" Finally the world snapped back into focus and Sherlock shrugged off Lestrade's hand because people don't touch freaks, especially freaks who'd just lost their heart.

That's the truth of the matter, isn't it? He wasn't someone who needed to ask the wizard for a heart. He was, as Sebastian Snider had once dubbed him, Lord Snow, and the ice around his heart had only been melted when he cared about people. Person.

He managed to nod at Lesatrade's question and the DI swore impressively even as he hustled Sherlock out. "Where are you going?" Always dense, Donovan stood between them and the hospital and Sherlock wondered what the voice that sounded rather like John Watson in his head would say about hitting her across her wide, stupid face.

"It's the doctor," Lestrade said, even though John hadn't been a doctor for months now, not since he got too weak to stand up for more than twenty minutes at a time. Donovan moved out of the way.

When Sherlock entered the hospital room, it was in time to see John get wheeled out to surgery. "What's going on?" Lestrade asked a doctor. Sherlock only stared at John, who opened his eyes and smiled at the sight of him. He looked sicker than he had four hours ago.

"I knew you'd come. Like my theatrics?"

"This is a bit melodramatic even for you, John."

"Not as melodramatic as it's about to get. Apparently some eighteen-year-old kid died and I'm stealing his kidneys." Lestrade was still speaking to the doctor, giving Sherlock another moment.

"People die in surgery."

"People die." John said simply. "And the both of us have been trying to change that fact for a while now. There's only so many times you can escape death you know." They were grabbing the bed now, wheeling it down the hall. Somehow, Sherlock had put his hand on John's, like once upon a time a boy had done for him in a laboratory.

John's hand was wrenched away from his and Sherlock had to watch as he went further and further away from him. When the door slammed, Lord Snow could feel the ice begin to creep back over his heart.

**.***.**

**next chapter is the last. ya'll get to decide what that means. in the meantime, peace. and remember: we eat reviews like cake.**


	8. Lord Snow's Heart

**Sherlock**: People have died.  
><strong>Moriarty<strong>: That's what people _**DO!**_

.***.

Things die. Leaves and trees. Seasons die, phones die, fires die. Conversations die, and so does light. Hair is dyed, but in a different sense of the word. (but hair is dead to begin with, so it almost but not quite fits the category.)

Sherlock's brain was making connections so fast he put his hand to his temples and rubbed, wishing for it to stop. _Death of a Salesman, death knolls, power dies, aspiration dies, hope..._

A hand grabbed his rubbing at his temple and a soft voice said, "Poking your brains out isn't going to help him." Sherlock ignored Molly, as he usually did.

There was a time when he was ten or eleven when a classmate died in a plane crash. He was standing with his father, who flew small private planes as a hobby, in a grassy field and he was run into by a plane. Sherlock had laughed the first time he heard this, and everyone had stared. They'd never seen Holmes laugh before, and they couldn't believe he was laughing over the death of a classmate.

There was a time when a boy tried to befriend him in school, or a boy had a crush on him and Sherlock wasn't interested, and Sebastian Snider went on to do good and great things in life only to be murdered for being a homosexual. Sherlock hadn't found this death as funny and in fact had tried looking into it, but he'd been in hiding at the time and didn't get much further than staring broodingly at daily papers, hoping for clues to be hidden in their depths.

Everything that lives dies. In a hundred years, every single person now alive on the earth will be dead, replaced with all new people to continue that constant cycle of life.

Sherlock had no problem with that cycle. For the most part people were dull and a constant recycling meant that eventually something interesting will turn up. And even when people he knew died...well, he understood the biology of it. A bullet to the head will kill a man. A heart attack will kill a man. A punctured lunch will kill a man.

Multiple organ failure will kill a man.

Because that was the heart and soul of it, of everything. Sherlock knew and understood that people had to die. But he didn't know why _people_ had to include _John_. Someone who cared about people and human interactions and had been making an active difference in the world until Sherlock left him and his body rebelled and cancer spread like fire all over his body._  
><em>

And Sherlock, even though he knew everything must die, was suddenly terrified at the thought of this one person, insignificant, as they all are, in the great scheme of the universe, dying. And leaving him all alone.

**Eight: Lord Snow's Heart**

"I'm sorry," Sherlock said, blinking. Lestrade stared at him, unused to the younger man apologizing. For anything. "Can you say that again?"

"Are you feeling all right, Sherlock? We can talk about this later."

"No, we'll do it now. John doesn't like me without cases. Says I get annoying." Sherlock smiled the thinnest of smiles, remembering when he was younger and his brother had taught him how to be charming. _But why do I have to smile? I don't feel like smiling. _And Mycroft had said, _charismatic people run the world, Sherlock. Study their ways and you will be unstoppable._

Lestrade nodded and closed the case file. "You need to come to terms with this, Sherlock. It's not healthy to avoid the problem."

"I'm not avoiding anything. I'm merely focusing all my attentions on the case." But Sherlock could feel his heart pounding. He cursed it and imagined a block of ice encompassing the organ. He was the tin man with a lost heart. He was Lord Snow.

Lestrade shook his head and got up. "It's all right to...feel _bad_ about this, Sherlock. He was a good man."

"He _is_ a good man." Sherlock snarled, "He's still alive."

The detective inspector sighed, rubbed the back of his neck. Why did such a lousy job always have to fall to him. "Only...Sherlock, he's only alive in the most technical sense of the word. The thing that made John Watson...his soul or spirit or whatever...it's gone."

Sherlock turned his back on Lestrade and slunk into the hospital room he'd vacated. He didn't say goodbye. Lestrade swore, fumbled with his cell phone, dropped it, picked it up, dropped it again, and ended up sinking to the floor, remembering a man who would follow a certain consulting detective to all the crime scenes, playing journalist and Jiminy Cricket at once. Remembering when Sherlock (died/disappeared) and John would show up at the crime scenes and just stare and sometimes offer a little something, usually doctorly knowledge that on at least one occasion had solved the case. And Lestrade would go up to him and say, _how you holding up, doctor? _ And John would shrug and smile the way people do and sometimes they'd get coffee afterwards, two ordinary men who crossed paths because of a sociopath.

He stayed on the floor for a while, listening to Sherlock in the next room, talking to a man in a coma.

"The nurses think I'm doing this because you're my boyfriend," Sherlock's deep, rolling voice made the words sound like just another fact in a long list. "They obviously don't know about the skull." John would smile there, even Lestrade knew that (of course Lestrade knew that, he'd known the doctor for four years. Four years! Had it been so long?) "Everyone thinks your dead. You should probably prove them wrong. You know how we love proving the world wrong." No, Lestrade thought. No, that was just Sherlock. John liked to make people happy. He was the typical middle child, the mediator, the one who sacrificed his own happiness to see others smile. That was who John Watson was, not someone in it for the prize at the end.

"But of course, the nurses think I'm infatuated with you. Their helpfulness is nauseating." A sigh, a scrape of a chair, and Lestrade pushed himself to his feet. He was a grown man. He should not be sinking to the floor like a character in a soap opera. "Only you know I'm only here because everywhere else is intensely boring." Lestrade entered the room in time to see Sherlock's hand squeeze John's dead one tight, in time to see the man bow his head just a little.

He was crumbling. Lestrade knew, because he had just done it outside. But Sherlock Holmes doesn't crack under pressure. Humans do that, not robots or tin men.

"They want to unplug him today."

"No body wants to kill him, Sherlock." Lestrade said, leaning against the door frame, remembering the first time he'd seen that long face drawn out in pain. That first time it'd been over withdrawl, over drugs, the only way to escape the tedium of life. Or the only way until an apparently mundane doctor sought out a flatmate in the mortuary of St. Barts. The Sherlock addicted to an alphabet soup of drugs wouldn't have been able to understand a friendship. He would have laughed if Lestrade had told him that one day he'd look so...lost. Lost in the face of grief and death. Lost over the loss of a friend.

"They want to take away the thing that is keeping his heart beating and his lungs breathing. They want to kill him."

"It's been five weeks."

"He's still alive!" Sherlock snapped, his hand tightening around John's limp one. "There's still a chance while he's alive!" When they pull the plug, not even the great intellect of Sherlock Holmes could save anything.

"Sherlock...would he want to live like this? Would a man who fought in a war, who had a great brain - don't look like that, no one rival's yours, he was a trauma surgeon for God's sake -"

"I didn't...of course John is smart..."

"Would he want to exist like this? It's not even living, you know. It's just...staying."

Sherlock's lips twitched. He remembered when a spider, proud of the web he'd spun, had complained about humanity's propensity to just _stay alive_. He didn't share that thought with Lestrade.

"I punched him once, you know. When he found me using drugs."

"I know. You called me in the very, very early hours of the morning. I was expecting you'd unearthed another massive criminal conspiracy."

"Mmm." Sherlock wasn't looking at the detective, just down at his friend. His friend! Oh, Sebastian Snider would never recognize Lord Snow now. "Once I convinced him I was dying. And I never noticed when he was hurt. I wasn't...well, he was my first friend. I don't think I was very good at it."

"Mistakes are normal. To err is human." John would have laughed that that too, at the insinuation that Sherlock Holmes was just like the lowly humans he pretended to be so detached from.

Lestrade wondered if he'd ever be able to say things around Sherlock without thinking about what a good man would have once laughed at. But he had a job to do, and to do it he had to stop thinking about that good man as being alive. "Sherlock...you have to -"

"I know what I have to do." Sherlock snapped, not looking at him, "Is it so wrong of me to want to avoid the issue as long as possible?"

"No," Lestrade said, settling in for a wait.

A doctor came by and said that there was officially no evidence of cancer. Lestrade actually did laugh at that, and when the others in the room looked at him he shrugged. "'S a bit funny, isn't it? It's not the cancer that's killing him at this point. It's bloody multiple organ failure."

"And a coma."

"Technically, the coma's not killing him." Lestrade didn't know why he was pressing the point, or why he was laughing so hard he had to hold onto a chair. He just knew this was up there on the list of worst days of his life.

Another doctor came by and tried to explain to Sherlock why he should pull the plug now. "There's a young man upstairs, twenty-seven, his whole life ahead of him. He has two little kids..."

"A young man died and gave his kidneys to John. John's body rejected those kidneys and every other organ. What makes you think John's spleen is viable?"

The young doctor took a literal step back, "It's...it's not an organ this young man needs. It's...eyes."

Sherlock threw the woman out and turned to rage at a room with one person in a coma and one person who would have given almost anything to be in one. "His _eyes_? They want his _eyes_? Can you even do eye transplants?" Sherlock was thinking about walking around London and running into a man with John's eyes. The thought made him feel violently ill. This whole day was making him feel ill.

"Sherlock...you can't keep putting this off."

"Why does it have to be done today?"

"Because that's what you said yesterday!" Lestrade said, "And the day before! There's no miracle here, Sherlock. No tricks. No one waiting to jump out and yell surprise. This is just the end."

"We had a miracle before."

"Before, you had a man who believed in miracles." Lestrade said, scrubbing a hand over his face. "What do you believe in?"

"I believe in John."

Well, Lestrade had walked right into that one. He nodded, got his coat from the rack near the door, and left the room. He'd come back tomorrow. There'd be no plug pulled now.

.***.

"This is no life." Lestrade said.

"I believe in John." Sherlock said. He'd brought his violin to the hospital and was plucking the strings. A symphony was forming in his head, a soft prologue transforming into a sweeping cadenza. A title was forming, too. _The Heart of the Matter. _A strange name for a symphony, but it would make John smile.

.***.

"Sherlock, you need to make a decision."

But Sherlock was jotting down another note, crossing out a bar. He didn't acknowledge Lestrade and the DI had to get back to work.

.***.

Three months after the surgery, twelve weeks without cancer, after ninety-one days in a coma, John Watson's face twitched in the direction of the sun, in the direction of the music dedicated to him. In the direction of Sherlock.

Sherlock didn't notice. He was playing the violin and, anyway, there were too many tears in his eyes.

So John sank back below the sea of blackness he'd been drifting in.

.***.

COME TO HOSPITAL. JOHN AWAKE. -SH

.***.

John Watson sat in the sunlight. He'd smiled at a pretty nurse until she'd wheeled his chair towards the patch in the corner of the room, smiled at her again and asked if he could have the papers on the dresser. "That music your boyfriend's been writing? Wish my boyfriend would write me a symphony."

Too tired to correct her, he just said, "It sounds brilliant but imagine being woken up to that every morning."

"I'd love every minute of it." The girl asserted, leaving him alone with the music.

He put a hand on it, on the pages thumbed through so many times the edges were worn like cloth. He remembered coming out of the coma, the blackness lifting like a curtain before a play and suddenly the world had expanded from a little box to a sea of sound and light and at the center was _music_. Music that wasn't really notes on a violin but the sound of a soul, of tears cried into a pillow so no one else could hear. And he knew that the sound was Sherlock's famously absent heart breaking.

He must have moved, because the next second the music stopped. "John?" His own name a mere breath, a wish too outlandish to even be spoken aloud. And then Sherlock's hand was in his and another hand on his face and he was calling for nurses and doctors and everything was loud and John sank back into the blackness again to escape it all. The blackness had been nice, actually. He'd just popped out to listen to the music..

And now here he was two weeks later, still not out of the hospital but definitely out of a coma. And most likely out of miracles. As Sherlock had pointed out yesterday while John was reading the paper and Sherlock was composing (it was very close to being at Baker Street, except for the smell of death which permeated the hospital) they must have used up their miracles.

"I don't plan on getting cancer again," John shrugged, turning the page.

"That's what you said last time," Sherlock reminded him, changing the E to a G.

The patch of sun was shrinking. Soon, John would be in the bed again, though he'd been promised a pass home within a week. They just wanted to figure out what had brought him back from the dead. They didn't know that the answer was not in scans of the ex-soldier's brain but in the papers John was holding.

Yes, he'd come back because of the music. Music could cross language barriers and boost morale. Its power was unexplored and unimaginable. But more than that, he'd come back because of the title of the piece. Officially _The Heart of the Matter_, next to it, in smaller letters, was the title Sherlock knew the music by. _Lord Snow's Heart._

He'd come back because if he'd died, a sociopath would revert back to a tin man. He'd come back because he was a integral part of another person. He'd come back because it had taken Sherlock years to figure out how to be someone's friend, and all that hard work couldn't just go to waste.

**.***.**

**yeah, we're suckers who can't kill wonderful characters like john watson, who's so resilient and so strong and a _soldier_ who will survive anything with class. **

**thank you, thank you for all the wonderful input and encouragement you guys have offered. you have no idea how much it means to us that there are people out there who like our writing. we've bitten the bullet and decided to go to school for creative writing, with the ultimate goal of maybe possible publishing books one day. and the kind words we've gotten from people on this website are a big motivator for that.**


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